M.Inf. / Enterprises are in the midst of some revolutionary changes in how people are managed in work situations. The major premise underlying work-force management traditionally has been that efficiency can be achieved best by imposing management control over workers' behaviour. Today, in response to massive evidence that control-oriented management models can produce outcomes that subvert the interest of both enterprises and the people who work in them, a new work-force management model is appearing - that of participative management. The premise of the emerging model is that enterprises must elicit the commitment of their employees if they are to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in contemporary markets. Rather than relying on a "retain and control" management, enterprises in the future will apply a "share and learn" management where they will heavily rely of member self-management in pursuing collective objectives. This study intends to stress the fact that employee potential needs to be mobilised by management and can only show up as performance when employees are given opportunity to contribute to decision-making with the minimum interference of management. This study calls for a transformation of leadership willing to empower staff to participate fully and freely in the creation of the future. The time has come to transform the way in which leaders work with and provide leadership to staff in academic information services. Leaders in academic information services need to realise that employee participation will enhance commitment and performance for both employees and management. A review of literature revealed that participative management is more than only a willingness to share influence - formal patterns of participation need to be truely implemented where employees have a right to contribute on all levels of decision-making. Participation is not an absolute term - there are various degrees of participation and types of involvement programmes to apply. Participative management is more complex than simply allowing employees to make some of the decisions. It involves formal programmes which need to be effectively implemented. The empirical survey which was done through a twenty-item questionnaire distributed to seven academic information services in Gauteng, revealed that participative management is applied at these institutions but more in low-level decisions. This indicated that participation is still limited and controlled by management and is not yet experienced as a right by employees. This study also clearly showed that self-regulation occurs most effectively through self-managed work-teams. These teams offer the highest degree of decision-making autonomy to all levels of staff and are a unique and viable alternative to traditional forms of work design in academic information services. Directors and leaders of modern academic information services need to encourage and facilitate self-regulation among employees of all levels. This will help to cope more effectively with future challenges of rapid change and technological complexity that now threaten efforts to create more responsive academic information services.

M.A. / This dissertation is an explorative study of the importance of participative communication conducted at one South African organization. The influence of the external democratic environment on the internal organizational environment was discussed within the broad parameters of the open systems approach. The new labour legislation in South Africa, the new Labour Relations Act (NLRA), emphasizes democratic principles and values. Participative management is emphasized as a management style that should be encouraged. Access to information and employee participation in organizational operation are indicated as key components in the move towards more participative organizational environments. The renewed importance of an organizational context that supports worker participation processes emphasizes the need to investigate how a participative environment can most effectively be established. Information sharing and participation in decision-making require effective communication structures and an environment that supports and encourages employee involvement. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of effective communication in participative organizational contexts with specific focus on South Africa. The newly emphasized democratic external democratic external environment requires the encouragement of effective participative management. The study advocated that communication structures as mechanisms for participation in organizational decisionmaking should therefore be critically analyzed. In order to ensure effective communication in participative environments, communication effectiveness was formulated in terms of specific research objectives that were explored, namely information efficiency (availability of information), communication channels available for information and the number of channels available for participation. Variables that could possibly influence these theoretical constructs were identified and explored, including job level, union membership, workplace forum membership, workplace forum participation, fear of participation and communication climate. In the literature study consideration was given to recognized theories related to the systems approach, climate and culture and participative management. The organizational internal culture was also discussed and considered, as cultural change should play a major role in the move towards a participative culture. The empirical part of the study was conducted as a case study at Columbus Stainless. Research objectives in terms of the aim of the study were explored indicating the importance of participative communication by measuring specific theoretical constructs as formulated in terms of the theoretical framework. The most prominent findings can be summarized as follows: • In terms of information efficiency variation between junior and senior level employees existed. Availability of information, both current and desired, was indicated as a theoretical construct that should be measured. • Variation existed in the perception of organizational information efficiency (amount of information) between organizational members who are scared of participation and members who are not scared of participation. Employees with less access to information were more scared of participation. • Wider access to communication channels providing information on micro level was related to more positive perceptions of the communication climate. • A correlation existed between fear of participation and the number of channels used for participation on macro level. Respondents who on average participated in fewer channels on macro level were less scared of participation. • Communication channel usage on macro level was almost statistically significantly related to positive perceptions of the communication climate.

The current study seeks to examine the relationships between perceptions of employee empowerment and perceptions of leadership, span of control, and industry type. Participants were gathered from an archival source employing a high school alumni e-mail group (n = 361) and a survey from 9 organizations (n = 647) and combined into a larger sample (n = 1008). The participants took Bodner's (2005) Assessment of Employee Empowerment and Assessment of Empowering Leadership instruments. Support was found to suggest that people report being less empowered than they believe that top management would report about them. Also, participants reported that their leader was less empowering than they believed top management would report about the leader. Span of control was found to impact perceptions of empowerment. Production workers reported feeling more empowered than workers in service industries. Participants did not report that leaders were more empowering if they were higher in the hierarchy (executive) than lower levels (coach, employee). Also, a respondent's position did not affect the relationship between job type and feelings of empowerment. This study suggests that the organizational design (span of control) and industry type may affect empowerment initiatives, while lower levels of the organization may view empowerment much differently than top management.

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Rapid and chaotic changes in market environments have caused business organizations to modify their organizational structures and social relationships. This paper examines the change in relationship between management and employees, which is shifting from an adversarial and controlling role to facilitation and employee empowerment. This paper's research question concerns how classical sociological theory would explain power redistribution within organizations and the formation of an associative and collaborative relationship which contradicts traditional paradigms. Traditional bureaucratic and contemporary organizational forms are compared and contrasted. Organizational climate, psycho-social components of underlying assumptions and group ethics are seen to be the mechanisms impelling transformation. Organizational change is driven by an emerging secular ethic. This ethic is embodied in an applied model of leadership and examined as an ideal type. The common ethic impelling organizational change is seen to be the same as that causing social transformation in both national and international spheres.

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In recent years, the construction industry has shown a steady decline in productivity and worker morale, while experiencing an increase in absenteeism (Maloney, 1991; CII, 1982). This has had a tremendous economic and motivational impact. This dilemma coupled with the fast-paced growth of competition has led many construction companies to look for new ways to improve overall performance and reduce absenteeism. For over twenty years construction researchers have proposed various employee participation programs (EPP’s) as a possible management method to counter the decline in productivity. The suggested modern styles of management included applications such as: quality circles, goal setting, participative decision making, work crew selection, work teams, and more recently, Total Quality Management / Continuous Improvement Programs. While these past research efforts proposed such approaches, they are still not considered standard practices for the industry. Some leading edge contractors are working towards adaptation of these new management methods in hopes of leading their competition. This research studies four construction firms and their efforts to implement Employee Participation Programs (EPP’s) as part of their movement towards improving quality management. Each of the four cases utilized a “top-down” implementation approach which began with the management, executive, office staff, and supervisory personnel (company level). At the time of this study, the case companies had not established EPP’s at the field level of their organizations. The research investigates employee participation programs and their effects on absenteeism. The research utilized F-Tests (analysis of variance), factor analyses, T-tests, and regression analyses in support of its findings. The overall results show that EPP’s can have a negative influence on the variation in absenteeism behaviors. The findings indicate that the EPP’s affects over time increase as the program matures. The study concluded that employee perception of their significance and their proximity to the participation played a major role in the overall effects on absenteeism. The study found that the decision / problem environment was the single best predictor of changes in absence behaviors. Significant absenteeism trends were identified in Post-EPP measurement periods. The outcomes of this study were secured through the development and pilot use of the Employee Participation Program Profile Classification System (EPP-PCS). / Ph. D.

The Fairfax County, Virginia, Public Schools made a commitment in 1981 to involve teacher leaders and principals in all schools in the improvement of school-based facilitation of instruction. It was decided that this school-based management emphasis would best be achieved through a training program that focused on concepts of participatory management. Therefore, beginning in the fall of 1981 (and for three successive semesters), principals, assistant principals, department chairpersons, and team leaders were selected to participate in a one-semester university credit course entitled “Distributed Management of Instructional Environments." The course provided a forum for the presentation of alternative decision-making models to the instructional leadership within each school. Leadership theories based on the writings of Herzberg, Maslow, Levinson, et al., and models such as Likert's linking-pin structure and Hersey and Blanchard's situational leadership were presented in large group sessions followed by small group discussions. Each school was required to prepare a planning document detailing the management processes and structures to be used to facilitate instruction. This study evaluates the success of the program in achieving its objectives. The CIPP evaluation model proposed by Stufflebeam provided the overall design for the study. / Ed. D.